David L. Heymann BA, MD, DTM&H

David Heymann is currently professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine; head of the Centre on Global Health Security at Chatham House, London.

Previously he was the World Health Organization's assistant director-general for Health Security and Environment, and representative of the director-general for polio eradication.

From 1998 to 2003 he was Executive Director of the WHO Communicable Diseases Cluster, during which he headed the global response to SARS, and prior to that was the director for the WHO programme on Emerging and other Communicable Diseases.

Earlier experiences at WHO include chief of research activities in the WHO global programme on AIDS. Before joining WHO he worked for 13 years as a medical epidemiologist in sub-Saharan Africa, on assignment from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), where he participated in the first and second outbreaks of Ebola hemorrhagic fever, and supported ministries of health in research aimed at better control of malaria, measles, tuberculosis, and other infectious diseases.